She's Not There
by Pandorama
Summary: Hotch/Prentiss AU - Please don't bother trying to find her, she's not there. (In which Prentiss isn't who she says she is, Hotch is a bachelor, Rossi is afraid of his publicist, and everything else is the same. Also, Blake is there.)
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's note, which you should read:**_

Awhile back, Tumblr user agentssa made a brilliant gifset with the following prompt:

 _AU | now we've got problems  
i married a hired gun wanted by multiple agencies and was presumed dead + you were supposed to be a cover and hiding in plain sight was a good idea (plus you're an FBI agent) but these feelings are very much real_

After seeing it several times, I decided to write it, in part because I was inspired by the Zombie's song, "She's Not There," from which I took the title.

A few parameters for this story:

 **1.** I'm calling this a "ten by ten" format. There are ten gif frames that comprise the original gifset, and each will serve as a prompt for a chapter, in the original order. Each chapter will be one thousand words because I like symmetry and themes and stuff.  
 **2.** It's not quite a Rashomon approach, because the POVs won't necessarily conflict, but each chapter will be split in half (500 words each) between the two main characters (Hotch and Prentiss).  
 **3.** I am trying to mirror the established canon as much as possible, which should be fairly obvious. Some things, like Jack's existence, just can't fit into the story. Ages are fairly ambiguous, here, because there's no set timeline. Obviously Sergio exists, because Sergio is the best.  
 **4.** There will be some minor tweaks to the original AU prompt/summary which will become obvious, because there are aspects of the characters that I feel are integral to who they are.  
 **5.** I like reviews. Constructive criticism is good. Character/ship bashing is not. Seriously, you do not want to get into a flame war with me. You will not be triumphant.

If you want to see the original giftset prompt, you can find it reblogged on my Tumblr under the tag "now we've got problems."

* * *

 **She's Not There**

She's beyond pissed. Being the only woman in this operation is a monumental pain in the ass, because she's their only option if they want to get inside without triggering complete mayhem.

Her dress is just this side of classy and she doesn't need to ask if it'll work because Clyde's eyes are glued to her cleavage the moment he picks her and stay there until she threatens to put her stiletto through his forehead.

And he knows she would, too.

He opens the door when they pull up with a lecherous little grin and she knows he's doing it because if she knocked him on his ass right here, it would draw a little more focus than they're going for. Instead, she lowers her voice and smiles as she tells him _sotto voce_ to fuck off before leaving him to hunt down the nearest bar where some poor, unsuspecting woman's going to fall for his accent.

She spots her mark the moment they pull up, waiting on his valet receipt, fiddling with his cufflinks in a way that screams discomfort.

"Let me guess. You froze up when you got the invite and couldn't come up with a good excuse." He turns and there's the slightest arch of his eyebrow. She offers a wry smile. "Or am I projecting?"

He doesn't say anything, but he holds her gaze. She moves in for the kill, laying a hand on his bicep. "I didn't mean - I apologize." She conjures a nervous laugh. "I'm just going to close my mouth and go drown myself in the fountain."

"I wouldn't recommend that. Dave's not very good about cleaning it, and his dogs like to use it as a wading pool."

"Well, I appreciate the warning…" She looks up at him.

There's a beat, a moment on which she knows everything hinges. "Aaron. Hotchner." He extends a hand.

"Emily." She slips her hand into his and squeezes it as the valet returns with a slip of paper. "Walk me inside, Aaron?"

"Not the fountain?"

She smiles shyly. "Maybe later. I've heard some good things about the wine. I'd hate to miss out."

By the time she's searching her purse for a nonexistent invitation, she has him. He rests a palm on her back and tells the rent-a-bouncer that she's with him. Soon, they're sipping cocktails and laughing as he tells her about some of David Rossi's exploits that didn't make it into his books.

An hour later, she's gotten the exclusive tour, met and charmed the fêted author, and technically, she's done. Except when she leaves Aaron and Dave (as he's insisted she call him) to call Clyde and tell him to put on some pants and come pick her up, she catches sight of Aaron in a mirror, his eyes still on her and a conspiratorial smirk on Dave's face.

The feeling that hits her square in the chest leaves her breathless, because it's been _so_ _long_ since she's felt a genuine emotion.

* * *

"Who is she?" Dave sprawls on the sofa like a Mafioso crossed with Merlin, rakish and relaxed.

The elation rises before he can fend it off, and he tries to suppress his smile. "Honest to god, I have no idea. I'm not sure she was even invited."

They've been friends long enough that the rest goes unspoken. Hotch doesn't have to defend himself. He trusts his instincts. Something compelled him to stay close to her. And Dave knows damn well how rarely he lets himself be guided by instinct alone.

"I'd be worried about a crazed fan if she hadn't been glued to you all night. Are you wearing some kind of new cologne? DARPA for men?"

"I've decided not to question it."

"'Atta boy." Dave drains his Scotch. "I wouldn't either. Even if she did turn out to be a crazed fan, I'm not sure I'd mind." He stands and pats Hotch on the shoulder. "I have to go mingle before Rita hunts me down and threatens to take away my Scotch."

"You're a Fed, Dave."

"And she's a publicist. Of whom I am terrified. I will not be made to feel like less of a man for that."

Hotch just shakes his head, gazing at his glass. As a rule, he doesn't take dating advice from anyone with three ex-wives, but on this, he can't argue. His last relationship spanned twenty years, and in the end, he knows it was about a decade too long, because neither he nor Haley were willing to make the concessions necessary to make it work.

He's known Emily an hour and it doesn't take a profiler to see there's something there. Whatever it is, it's something he hasn't felt in a long time, not since he first met Haley.

The feeling is only emphasized when he sees her coming towards him, and he feels a nervous twinge in his stomach like he's back in a high school auditorium, gathering his nerve.

"Hi again." She holds out a wine glass to him. There's a trace of a smile playing on her lips and he finds himself wondering what it'll be like to kiss them.

He doesn't have to wonder if he will. It's been a foregone conclusion since the moment he met her.

He takes a sip of wine, surprised to find that while he's the profiler, she's the one who managed to guess that he likes Sangiovese.

She grins at the surprise on his face, and he's mesmerized by the way it reaches her eyes, catching the light. "Dave told me."

He laughs. "Right."

She tilts her head to one side, looking up at him through sable strands of hair. "So…when exactly did you to realize I was crashing?"

He cocks an eyebrow.

"Why'd you go along?"

He licks his lips, stalling, ultimately opting for the truth. "Something told me I'd regret it if I didn't."

It turns out he doesn't have to wonder anymore what it'll be like to kiss her.


	2. Chapter 2

He's rusty at this. Not counting the blind date Rossi had set up six months ago - which had ended abruptly when he'd gotten called into work, and he hadn't been particularly torn up about that - his last first date had been with Haley.

Somehow, he doesn't see Emily being excited by a John Hughes movie.

So he profiles what little he knows. She'd talked wine with Rossi which means she knows her stuff, but he's pretty sure that she isn't someone who enjoys pretention or overt attempts to impress. No French, no Italian, and definitely not someplace with a two-hundred dollar tasting menu. Someplace with good food, good wine, quiet enough that he'll be able to hear her but loud enough that he'll have an excuse to lean in.

When he wakes up the morning after their first date and sees her smiling softly in her sleep, he decides maybe he's not as rusty as he thought.

Not that he'd planned on, well…this. And he's pretty sure she hadn't either. The way she'd looked at him after he'd kissed her goodnight at her door had told him she wasn't anticipating whatever it was she'd felt, not any more than he had.

Her eyes flutter open and he can see that same flash of emotion as last night, almost as though she's shocked to be there.

He hears his voice come out a little hesitant. "Hi."

"Hi." She's whispering, and a flicker of fear seems to snowball.

"I can - if you want me to leave - "

For a moment, he can see she wants to let him. And then it's gone, and she's smiling. "Don't. I'm just a little…it's been awhile."

"Really? This is my average weekend," he tells her drily. "I'm considered quite the bureau playboy."

When she bursts out laughing a moment later, the sound is beautiful. She rolls toward him, finally, hand reaching out to brush a few strands of hair off his forehead. "That might've been the least smooth thing I've ever heard."

The same feeling takes hold that he felt last night, and he finds himself once again reaching for her without realizing it, kissing her because it feels like it's the only thing he can do.

Something is happening and he feels like maybe she's inevitable.

He cooks breakfast and they're both sort of fumbling to find the right balance between comfort and caution - and he thinks maybe he's not the only one who's out of his element - and when he goes to kiss her goodbye, there's a surge of heat and he has to break away with a groan before they end up back in her bed.

The team flies down to Little Rock the next day and he surprises himself yet again when he calls her just to say hello and explain his absence and ends up on the phone for an hour, and it happens again two days later.

He's falling for her, hard and fast.

* * *

She's known from the moment she saw him watching her at the party that he's going to get her in trouble.

And despite all the opportunities she has to stop it before it gets to that point, she doesn't. She takes risks, stupid ones. Staying that night instead of calling Clyde. Accepting his invitation to dinner. Inviting him inside her apartment and into her bed.

Two weeks after their first date, she realizes exactly how screwed she is when she sees his number flash on her cell and immediately picks up.

While she just happens to be staring down the barrel of a rifle with a member of the Russian mob in her sight.

And still, she's surprised by the softness in her voice when she answers, the way her mouth curves upwards without even meaning to.

She wonders, later on, what would've happened if the stakes had been higher, if she'd had the safety off and an order to shoot.

She's not entirely sure she'd have gone through with it, because every time she thinks about him, hears his voice, she wonders what he'd think if he knew who she really was.

And she's so, so tired of sacrificing for the job, of the gnawing emptiness that's settled in her chest, and the regimen of emotional detachment and occasional casual sex she's confined herself to for the better part of her adult life doesn't feel like a price worth paying anymore.

Something about him mutes the self-doubt that's been steadily rising since Marseille.

It's addictive.

She hears herself asking if he wants company, that she's working tonight and doesn't mind if he gets back after midnight. She doesn't tell him that her late-night work involves bugging an apartment or that she might have to cancel if she's caught, because she'll probably be missing an appendage or two.

When he breathes a sigh of relief and says he'll let her know when he lands, she realizes how long she's been relying on the sole motivation of not dying to get her through the day, and how good it feels to want something.

When she finds herself unscathed and standing on his front steps, knocking on his door, she thinks maybe it'll be worth whatever trouble he'll cause.

"Hi," she murmurs when he opens the door, and then he's pulling her inside, against him, and it's equal parts frantic and exhilarating as his hands run the length of her torso and push her sweater over her head and she unabashedly gropes him, gasping when he responds.

"Protection?" The word is muffled by her shoulder.

She feels her back hit the wall and hears something thud to the floor and doesn't care. "Pill," she gasps out. "Trust you. Just…"

And then she's out of words. She speaks four languages but none of them can come close to how it feels in that moment, how it feels to know for the first time in as long as she can remember that she's safe.


	3. Chapter 3

She wakes to a shrill ring and a groan from beside her. She hears him groping on the nightstand for his cell phone, another ring whining in the dark, and she echoes the sentiment, curling into the warm body beside her and pulling blankets over her head. His voice is dulled, but just barely, and she can feel the vibrations in his chest as her head rests there, his free hand brushing up and down her waist so soothingly she can almost ignore the fact that a middle-of-the-night call only ever means one thing, and she really, _really_ wants to stay here with him for another four hours at least.

He hangs up, and his sigh confirms it.

"Where?" She murmurs, lips pressed against his skin.

"Orange County." He switches on the lamp beside him and clarifies. "California."

"Mmm…" She forces her eyes open and eases the covers down so she can see, and his face makes it clear how reluctant he is to go anywhere. There's a sudden, intense need in her gut to have him here, beside her, and she slides her leg across his hips, straddling him. "How long until you have to be on the plane?"

"Forty-five minutes."

"How fast can you pack?" Her eyes hold steady on his and she presses her hips into his, and thinks how damn convenient it is that they hadn't bothered with pajamas last night.

He groans. "Fast," he tells her, hands reaching for her like she's magnetic.

"Good." She braces her hands beside his head, dipping down to brush her lips against his. "Cause otherwise we'd have to do this while you drove, and that seems a little dangerous."

An hour later, he leaves her wrapped in the sheets, sleepy eyes watching him walk away as she lets three words wash over her, words she hasn't heard in ages and had resigned herself to living without.

She knows he's not asking her to say it back, and she doesn't feel compelled. Not because she doubts what she feels, but because she's not quite ready to put that word to it, because she's so very out of practice at the thing itself.

It doesn't crystallize until he's been gone ten days, and she realizes she hasn't made it through a day since he left her in semi-darkness with those words that she hasn't replayed them to herself, hasn't thought about him, hasn't felt hollowed out by his absence and stunningly alone in her bed.

And of all places, it's in a car, looking through the viewfinder of a long-range lens at the face of a woman, her weathered countenance suddenly bright and young at the sight of her husband, a man whose crimes are unspeakable and is somehow still loved. It dawns on her then, the possibility that he might actually love her for who she is, enough to see past the things she does and still want her.

It makes her ache with the need to say the words.

* * *

He hadn't intended to say the words out loud. They'd slipped out as she'd come undone in his arms, gasping his name, and his shoulder still smarts from when she'd bitten down. He'd been lost in the feeling of her, in the depths of her eyes when she tipped her head had back, and he'd just -

He's brought out of his reverie by Rossi's voice, and he snaps back to see them all staring, his attempt at covering up how far away he was a spectacular failure.

"We've got a long flight. I don't know about the rest of you, but I could use an hour of shuteye. We're not going to get anywhere if we're all dragging."

Relieved as he is to have Dave save his ass, he knows it comes with a price. Sure enough, once they've dispersed, Rossi's back with two cups of coffee and a shit-eating grin. "Had ourselves a little wake-up call this morning, did we?"

"I have no qualms about shoving you out the emergency exit."

"You know, I think I deserve a little respect. It was my party where you met her."

"She was crashing, Dave."

Rossi's eyebrows head north and Hotch realizes he's just digging himself deeper. "I'm trying to remember if it was ever like this with Haley," he admits softly.

"And you're coming up empty, which makes you feel guilty, somehow."

"This morning, I, uh - " He catches Dave's look of interest and huffs. "Not that. Christ."

"I wasn't judging."

"I told her I loved her." His gaze drifts to the window, to the inky sky all around them. "It took me two years to say it to Haley. It's barely been four months."

"I don't think it matters, so long as you mean it." Dave sips his coffee. "I may be lousy at marriage, but I do know falling in love, and sometimes, it just sneaks up on you."

The moment they land, a lead drags them north to LA County, where the press makes everything worse, and their killer escalates in kind.

When he sees the fourth victim, the sight of dark hair soaked with blood hits him with such intensity that the blatant recreation of the Black Dahlia doesn't even register. Blake, her quiet empathy a godsend, nods to the crime scene to indicate she'll handle it and just murmurs "call her" quietly.

He doesn't realize how badly he'd needed to hear her voice until she answers, and there's something in it that tells him she feels it too, this _need_ overwhelming them. He hears something else, too, something almost fearful, and there's an urgency when she asks when he's coming back that actually hurts.

"I don't know. This case…"

"It's okay."

"Em, I…" He's utterly lost for words.

"Me too," she says, voice soft, and it's enough.

Still, when he gets home, worn to the bone by the chase, hearing her say the words washes away three weeks of brutal darkness, leaving only her.


	4. Chapter 4

They fall into a pattern after the California case. It's not intentional, but there's a need there, partly borne of a desperation not to be alone after what he's seen, and partly because, for the first time since he started at the bureau, he feels separated from something vital when he's away. Because she is.

He stops going home after cases, and starts going to her. She gives him a key and after the first few times, he starts coming back to find food and fresh laundry waiting. If it's late, he finds her waiting in bed, and sometimes he watches her sleep before he crawls in beside her. Sometimes she'll just turn to wrap an arm around him and nestle her head into his shoulder, and sometimes she pulls herself into his grasp and kisses him so desperately that it pushes every dark thing he's witnessed since he's been gone from his conscious.

They have a knock-down, drag-out fight in November after he mentions Thanksgiving and the possibility of her meeting his mother, and it's the first time he's ever seen her as anything but impenetrable. He doesn't catch himself in time, and the moment there's a crack in her armor, he strikes, and he's too ashamed and, frankly, confused to even apologize before he gets a call saying the team is needed in Tuscon.

It's in the eighties the whole week, but he feels cold when he lays in bed at night, alone.

He's too much of a coward to call her, instead heading home after they land, and he finds her waiting outside his door with bloodshot eyes and raw lips and he's shocked when she wraps her arms around him and starts to cry, murmuring apologies and telling him she's so completely screwed up and she's sorry and honestly has no idea how to do this but she wants to try.

He brings her inside and holds her, both of them pressed against the front door as she breaks apart, and every time he tries to apologize she cuts him off. It's only when she's asleep beside him that night that he can get the words out, whispering into her damp hair that he's sorry.

At first he's not sure if it's his perception or if she's actually different, but as winter creeps in on them, she's softer somehow, and she's the same woman he met that night in Dave's driveway, but her walls have begun to break down, and some of her bold confidence tempers and he feels a sense of déjà vu as he finds himself thrown once again by the feeling of falling in love with her.

In the midst of a case that has them spinning their wheels in Providence, he steps out of the police station to clear his head after too little sleep. He stops short when he sees it, and even if he knows it's too soon, he can't do anything else but buy the ring, because it's hers.

* * *

She's known from the outset that their relationship is an anachronism, incompatible with the life she lives, but over and over, she's put off the inevitable, because the longer it goes on, the further she falls.

When he starts talking about Thanksgiving and family, she panics. If it's just them, she can sustain the fantasy, but the prospect of bringing it home, literally, is a death knell. She's already lying to him. She can't let him repeat the lie to his own mother when it can only end with her breaking his heart.

In her panic, her subterfuge slips and she lets him glimpse raw insecurity, and when he throws it back at her, it feels like the air's been sucked from her lungs.

She knows she's incapable of trusting anyone, but hearing it from him tears her open, and she's bleeding emotion for days.

Clyde's an idiot, but he's not stupid, and he senses something's off right away. She shrugs him off at first, but then she fumbles in the field and he shoves her into a corner booth at a bar and demands an explanation for why she nearly got him killed.

She doesn't even realize she's considering it until she hears herself tell him she's thinking about getting out.

"Getting _out_?" Clyde scoffs. "Has that Fed of yours actually shagged your brains out? We don't get _out_ of this. Even if you could, you'd still be a ghost."

"You know about - "

"Darling, you underestimate me. I know what a well-loved woman looks like. And before you ask why I didn't try to stop you, try to recall the last time I tried standing in your way. I'd like to remain a fully-equipped male."

She eyes him, but doesn't say anything further, choosing instead to stall with a trip to the bar. When she returns, she sips in silence, because she can't stand the idea of telling him she wants out in favor of domesticity. Letting on that she's human is too dangerous in this game.

"I know you're tired," he tells her. "We both are. But I don't see a way out that doesn't leave you marked for death."

"You just said it," she tells him. "I'm already a ghost."

She knows from Clyde's expression that he understands, more or less, what she's going to do, even if he can't understand why.

Two months later, when she wakes up to find Aaron leaning over her, when he takes her hand and asks if she'll marry him, she doesn't tell him that he's asking her to make a choice between him and herself, that the ring he's holding will sever everything else in her life.

She just tells him "yes," because she's willing to take the risk if it means holding onto the feeling that floods her as he slides the band over her finger and kisses her.

It's funny, she thinks, that she's willing to die if it means she'll get the chance to live.


	5. Chapter 5

In her reckless youth, she hadn't been bothered by consequences. Most of the time, she'd craved them, theorized about just how fabulously she could disrupt the dull existence in which she'd felt trapped. Even when things had spiraled out, even when she'd gotten hurt in the process, she'd never felt a need for restraint.

Now, though, she's been living with a sword hanging overhead long enough that she's become something of an expert at everything she once avoided, learned to anticipate every consequence and plan for all contingencies, and the way she sets everything up is actually a thing of beauty in its intricate precision.

She supposes it's a twisted sort of payback for her youth when it all falls apart in spectacular fashion.

"Aaron?" She's jittery at the prospect of what's due to happen in less than eighteen hours, now, the enormity of it all beginning to set in, and she opens the front door with skin that's crawling with need for contact, for one last assurance of what she stands to gain. She sets her things down in the hallway of his apartment and follows the dim light, expecting to find him at the dining room table with files spread in an arc around him, his brow furrowed with creases she'll kiss away.

A moment before she rounds the corner, a sensation hits her that almost stops her in her tracks, something she's only felt twice before, the first as a terrified teenager staring down a pregnancy test and the second, three years ago in Marseille, when she'd realized the magnitude of what she'd gotten herself into.

Shadows darken his face as he looks up from where he's sitting, grasping a tumbler of ice and a file folder, and she knows the moment she sees his expression what's in there.

"We need to talk." He stands, still holding the folder, and nods to the seat across from him without making eye contact, instead moving to refill his glass. When he sits down again, he places a second tumbler in front of her, and she can't help but think there's a shred of hope in the fact that he's showing her that mercy.

He pulls a photocopy from the folder and slides it in front of her. She closes her eyes, reflexively unwilling to let this part of her life mar what she has with him. "Look at it," he tells her sharply.

"I don't need to," she tells him, somehow managing to keep her voice steady.

"Then explain to me who the hell Lauren Reynolds is, and why you look exactly like a hired gun who supposedly died three years ago."

She grips the glass in front of her to hide how badly her hands are shaking, and has to take a sip to mask the sound of ice knocking around.

"It was my cover." She wants so badly to sound strong, but she feels fragile under his gaze. "She's dead so that I don't have to be."

* * *

He hears her before he even sees her, and it's absolutely a sight when Garcia barrels into his office, JJ in tow, looking like he imagines he did in the final moments of the Bureau triathalon, except he wasn't running in hot pink heels.

"Sir," she gasps, "I have to - I don't - "

"Sit down," he instructs her.

She just shakes her head frantically. "No, no, Sir, you have to see this. I did what you asked, I tried to follow up with that Interpol contact about the hit from the prints, but he wouldn't - it was restricted, and I knew it was important so I did this thing that - well, you said it was important, and I figured - "

JJ steps forward. "There's something you need to see."

He follows them to the conference room and Garcia is a ball of nervous energy like he's never seen, pacing the room in odd half-loops and zigzags as JJ shuts the door.

"It just - I know I've only met her the one time, but you two were so cute, and I took a picture and I just - it's in my brain now, and then there it was, and…I promise I haven't shown this to anyone else, and if you tell us to forget it - "

"Garcia." JJ tips her head to the computer on the table. "Show him."

He gives JJ a questioning glance, and she simply shakes her head as the screen flickers to life, projecting the contents of Garcia's laptop.

 _Emily._

"It's her, isn't it?" JJ looks from the image to him, and he knows from the way her eyes drop that his expression gives everything away.

"It's a partial file," Garcia tells him, and he's tempted to send her home then and there, not because he can't trust her, but because watching the tears pool in her eyes makes it that much worse. "It's crazy encrypted. I don't think anyone was supposed to find it, let alone break the encryption. It looks like someone tried to erase it, and when they couldn't, they did their best to corrupt it."

His hands curl into fists at his sides. "What else did you find?"

"This was it," JJ tells him. "We have no way of knowing what it means."

His hand goes to his forehead, thumb digging into his temple. "This doesn't leave this room."

He's not expecting an argument, and one doesn't come.

"We don't know anything," JJ repeats softly. "It could be a mistake, Hotch."

He looks back at the photo projected in front of him and thinks maybe he's beginning to understand unconditional love, because for all the anger and fear flooding him, he still feels a pull.

Later, as he fixes a hard stare on her and hands over the photo, he realizes that all the hours he's been staring at it, as angry as he is, he's still thought of Lauren Reynolds as the woman he loves.


	6. Chapter 6

A part of him knows he shouldn't believe her story, and with anyone else, he wouldn't. It's so convoluted he can't entirely follow it, but somehow, she sees it every time he loses track and doubles back, and maybe it's because of that he's inclined to believe her.

Or maybe he's just that acutely in love with her that he's desperate to accept what she says.

"You're familiar with the concept of a red cell." It's not a question: she knows he does. "A few years ago, I was recruited by INTERPOL to something like a red cell. The normal cycle for agents is about eight weeks, in order to constantly have fresh eyes, but this was - it was a more long-term concept. Instead of playing Devil's Advocate, we were supposed to play the devil itself." She brings her thumb to her mouth, teeth worrying the nail, and he wants to reach out and grab her hand to keep it steady but a voice inside tells him he can't touch her, can't close the gap. "After about four months, I was approached about a deep cover mission. They were impressed with my language skills and I fit the profile they needed for someone to infiltrate. And because the team I was working with had leeway, we came up with the logistics for the mission.

"We'd been tracking a terrorist cell, but for some reason we could never get the drop on them. Eventually, we realized there had to be a leak from inside the intelligence community, but we couldn't establish what agency, or if it might be more than one. The only way to do it was to essentially manufacture evidence that would implicate me as a double agent, in case someone was able to ID me. Lauren Reynolds was a backstop."

"They burned you."

"More or less. I honestly don't know all the technical details, just that they had to use 'outside resources' to do it."

"White hats?"

"Grey hats. It was compartmentalized to keep information from leaking any further, so we used non-agency resources for some things. A group of contractors that we'd worked with before, ex-intelligence people, mostly. We used one of them to bring me in."

She shifts, running her fingers through her hair, and he has to fight the urge to move closer, to pull her against him, because he can feel her discomfort and his body screams at him to take it away.

"The whole op was supposed to take six months." She laughs wryly. "Which it didn't. We realized that it was a more coordinated effort than we'd initially realized, and pulling me out would have blown everything, and probably put people at risk."

"They burned you," he repeats, and the weight of realization is something of a catalyst, forcing him to his feet and towards her.

She looks up at him, reaching out and stopping him in his tracks with a gaze that twists his insides in knots. "I burned myself."

* * *

She knows she could lie to him, but the truth is, she's too tired. The prospect of freedom is so close, she's not sure she'd survive if she went back now.

If she lies, that's her only option.

So she tells him everything: her time undercover, infiltrating a trafficking ring run by a ruthless ex-IRA member, opting to stay in rather than put everyone else at risk. The realization that she'd gone too deep, that she had to choose between actually becoming one of them or running, setting up a ragtag extraction with Clyde and his team with nothing more than a warning to INTERPOL.

"The file you found was the only way to keep Doyle and whoever he had inside from coming after me." Her nails are bleeding now, sticky smears on her jeans, fingertips stained red. "Clyde brought me into his team. For the last year, we've been tracking the leak. I still have contacts at INTERPOL who feed me intel here and there, but I'm technically a rogue agent. For everyone's sake, I have to stay out."

He runs his hands through his hair. "So how does this end?"

"One of two ways: either we track down the leak and arrest Doyle, or…"

His face registers what she's going to say before it's out, just as Clyde had. "No."

"It's my decision, Aaron. I'm done. I'm tired of this." She dips her fingers in her empty glass, soothing her chapped skin on an ice cube. "I want my life back. And I want to be with you."

"Emily." He moves towards her, grabbing the glass from her, the ice hitting the floor, and she can feel it in the way he grasps her, that he understands what she's doing and why. "Let me find a way to get you out."

"There isn't one." She buries her face in the crook of his neck. "That night I met you…I was there to track down a lead. We'd gotten a tip that information was coming from inside the Bureau - "

"Rossi?" He pulls back. "You can't think - "

"It was a bad lead. But we know for certain that someone there is connected to Doyle. You can't get involved, Aaron."

"Then let me use my team. Just them."

She just pulls him in closer, not speaking.

"Please, Emily."

The desperation of his tone slices into her. "I never meant for any of this to happen." She swallows, throat dry. "I have something set up. It can work."

"No." He pulls away. "It's not a coincidence that your file came up. Someone knows where you are, and they knew that file would land on my desk." His eyes are dark, darker than she's ever seen, and it dawns on her that he's in it every bit as much as she is, stands to lose just as much.

"Okay," she breathes.

It comes out a ragged whisper. "I love you, Em."

That night, something inside her finally comes alive.


	7. Chapter 7

A pair of blondes arrive first, one whom she's met in passing, the other, unfamiliar, but both of them look at her without judgment or anger and she needs that so badly. Garcia exudes acceptance in waves, and the smile she offers, while hesitant, eases the knot in Emily's stomach.

Rossi is next, and he and Aaron disappear into the kitchen for a few minutes for a conversation she hates that she's forced him into.

She knows who Reid is without an introduction, both because she's read his work and because even with the barest scraps of description she's heard, there's no one that fits the name better than the lanky, awkward boy who walks in and sticks out a skinny arm to introduce himself.

When the brunette that follows him like a mother hen introduces herself, it's in Arabic, with a conspiratorial wink, and Emily is beginning to understand why Aaron trusts these people the way he does.

Morgan comes in last, eyes narrowed as he plainly tries to read her, but Garcia's on him like a magnet, grabbing his arm and grounding him. When they sit around the dining room table and Aaron lays bare what she's dragged them all into, Morgan's anger is obvious, and so is the way Garcia holds him in check.

"Excuse me," Emily murmurs, retreating to the hallway and closing her eyes as she slides down the wall and wonders if she's just ruined a half dozen lives.

"I've known Aaron a long time." She looks up to find Dave Rossi looming over her. "I trust him. He believes you, and so I do, too." He holds out a hand, and she lets him pull her up. "Just know that these people are my family. Do not hurt them, because if you do, you'll have to answer to me. And I'm scarier than I look."

"You'll watch his back if I can't," she murmurs, and she's surprised at the bare emotion in her voice.

"Funny. He just made me promise the same thing."

It's past midnight when they all leave, and Emily all but collapses into Aaron, torn between exhaustion and need. "I'm sorry," she chokes out, and it seems to spark something in him. She's breathless as he gathers her up and brings her to bed and undresses her like he's stripping off the person she pretended to be, and underneath she's naked and raw.

And for the first time, someone is actually seeing her.

It's a long, slow, painstaking build, and when she comes, it's like a dam breaking, and she cries in his arms, releasing three years of pent-up emotions she's only now letting herself feel.

She wakes with his solid warmth behind her and his fingers woven through hers, and gathers the strength to ask him if he's sure, to tell him she won't drag him into this if it's just about saving her.

Two hours later, standing in City Hall, he answers her by making her his wife.

* * *

"Garcia might have something."

He looks up from his desk to see Morgan, his expression grim. "I'll be right down."

"Hotch…" He trails off with a sigh.

"I know you have reservations about this, Morgan." It's not just his intuition as a profiler, either. He's overheard Morgan more than once airing his concerns to JJ and Rossi.

"I know you care about her, Hotch. But are you sure you're being objective, here? I just - I'm sorry, but are you really sure that she's not using you to get out of a bad situation? Or worse?"

"No." Hotch stands, rounding the desk. "I'm not. But she trusted me enough to tell me more than she had to, and to bring this to the team. _This_ team. She knows the reputation of the BAU, and I trust that she wouldn't accept our help if she had a hidden agenda."

Morgan lets it all settle for a moment, and then nods. "Okay. Then I'm in. For whatever you need."

Garcia's find is nothing monumental, but it's a breadcrumb, and it leads to another. They plod along, and as much as Hotch has always known they had his back, he's floored by the way they all take on the task, huddling in his hotel room after hours in Tulsa and Jacksonville, sitting in his office until midnight, gathered around Garcia's air gapped laptop, Reid acting as an analog hard drive.

The boy genius also comes up with a way for him to communicate with Emily on the road, a brilliant cipher complemented by the secure cell phone Garcia provides, and a part of him wishes he could see the looks on their faces if he let them in on the discovery that his wife has a flair for sending encrypted sexts.

Six weeks after they start looking, they have four names, and Hotch starts letting himself consider a life not far off when this will be behind them. He's shocked to find himself imagining a future that includes children, because he's never felt that urge, his reticence a part of what doomed his relationship with Haley. Now, though, he can see it in vivid detail, the way his daughter shrieks with laughter as he holds her aloft, her grin the same one he saw on her mother's face the night they met. Their son's expression intense and determined as he scrimmages for a soccer ball, Emily beside him as he shouts encouragement, holding her breath in anticipation. The way the sun glints off her long hair as they sit side-by-side on the sand, their children shouting as they splash around in the surf.

The night they narrow the list to three, he drives home with that image in mind, and as he steps out of the car and hears the unmistakable sound of bullet leaving a rifle, it's their little girl's dark hair whipping in the ocean breeze that stays with him.

He wakes up in a hospital bed, and Emily is gone.


	8. Chapter 8

He dreams of drowning, of swimming deeper into the blackness as he tries to grip her ghost-white fingers in his, fighting the current and following her down because he doesn't want to surface alone.

He wakes to a suffocating tightness in his lungs, and when he tries to breathe he starts to choke. For a moment, he's still drowning, gasping for air, until the pain registers so intense that shadows creep in around the corners of his eyes, and he has to fight the urge to give in, because he needs to know.

Rossi's face tells him everything, but the truth is, he's known since he heard the gunshot.

For all the lies - or more accurately, the things unsaid - that defined the first phase of their relationship, there have been just as many revelations since she first told him about Doyle. He doesn't need to be a profiler to recognize how badly she'd needed to let someone in on the years' worth of secrets she'd accumulated, and he knows that as hard as it's been for her to admit some of it, she's found a sort of solace in saying it aloud.

These last weeks, their bed has become a confessional, and just as she's revealed her darkest secrets to him, he's shared parts of himself he'd buried so deep that only something as cataclysmic as Emily could have unearthed them.

He's relearned her in an entirely new way, and, strange as it is, he thinks he knows her the way he does now because of what she'd kept hidden for so long.

To his credit, Dave looks remarkably unsurprised when Hotch croaks out what he knows:

Emily has gone after Doyle herself.

She leaves her wedding ring in the bloodstained pocket of his suit jacket, and once he's home, he loops the ring through a chain and lays against his skin, because it's a promise that she's coming home.

The night after they'd gone to the courthouse and stood before a judge, they'd lain together in bed, her bare back pressed to his chest, her arm outstretched as she'd gazed at her hand, and she'd mumbled into the crook of his arm that as much as she loved the diamond he'd slipped on her finger months before, the silver band that bordered it meant more, because he'd known who she was and wanted her still, and forever.

He rushes his recovery and lands himself back in the hospital after ten days without her, stitches torn open and delirious from fever. His team babysits him after that, letting him backseat-driver them as they try to trace her, because they know they can't stop him from looking.

He's relentless, right up until he finds Clyde Easter in his office, ashen-faced and angry as he tells Hotch that he's lost contact.

When they lay all the pieces on the table, the picture that emerges fills him with a fear so intense and excruciating that a bullet wound pales in comparison.

* * *

His blood is still caked under her fingernails and rust-colored stains are drying into stiff patches on her clothes, pulling at her skin, as she walks through the hospital parking lot with a throbbing head and a mouth sour from vomiting.

She's been incomprehensibly stupid to let herself think there was a way out of this.

She slips back into being Lauren so easily that it scares her - and it'll haunt her, later, to think that maybe she's been fooling them both, that she never really shed this persona at all, that it'll always be there, that all she has to do is scratch the surface and there it'll be - but it's the only way.

Emily has become too intertwined with Aaron to withstand the same darkness Lauren once did.

She glares her way through an all-night Wal-Mart, daring strangers to comment on her appearance, and shoves her bloody clothes in the bathroom trash. She uses the first of a half-dozen burner phones she buys to call Clyde, pulling onto the entrance ramp for I-95 East with white knuckles.

She waits for Doyle on a bench in the Common, the smell of institutionalized caffeine dependency throbbing in the air as she anxiously picks at the flecks of blood still clinging to her cuticles.

"Hello, Lauren," comes a voice fresh from her nightmares. "It's been a long time."

"Tell me that bullet was meant for me."

"Now why would I want to kill a woman who's already dead?"

He looks almost pleased when she whirls, every muscle protesting her restraint, fury and force boiling into an overwhelming desire to reach into his chest and tear out his heart because she wants him to feel what she does, wants to kill him for trying to take hers.

"Even if my men weren't admiring those lovely eyes of yours through their sights, I wouldn't advise doing what you're thinking, love. I have some friends who get… _nervous_ …when I don't call."

"Then why don't you tell them to shoot?" She growls.

"Where's the fun in that?" He grins at her, a grin that reminds her to be ashamed of all she's done, all the time she's spent with this man. "Soon, love. But tonight is just a reunion between old friends." He drops his voice to a whisper and cranes his head so his mouth is beside her ear. "I've missed you, Lauren."

Her legs are shaking as she walks away from him, and she makes it just far enough to know she's alone before she sinks to her knees and vomits into a pile of freshly fallen leaves.

It's not until days later when she's holed up in the safehouse Clyde arranged and blacks out, coming to with a pounding headache from the dual impact of the fall and of recognition, that she puts it together.

For the first time in her life, she realizes, her knuckles white on the scratched bathroom counter, she's going to have to run from a fight.


	9. Chapter 9

At first, she stays close, tracking Doyle as best she can, trying to keep one step ahead and staying on the move, digging into the archives of her memory for the location of a few more safehouses in the area and then hopping dingy motels where she can pay in cash and take her pick of rooms.

Three weeks in, she's spent the night so many different places that she's lost count, and she's exhausted like nothing she's ever experienced, drained to the bone and questioning how long she can keep this up.

She circles back to another safehouse the next day, and it's stupid and she ought to know better, but she's barely sleeping as it is and the lumpy mattresses that squeak every time she breathes in those shitty motels make it all worse.

So does the memory of what it was like to drift off with the hard plane of Aaron's chest at her back and his arm wrapped around her, the heat of his body melting over her and the childlike security of being tucked under soft blankets.

She just needs a day, she tells herself, and, after all, it's a secure location with deadbolts and barred windows, and at this point she's desperate enough to ignore the fact that returning to a location is the dumbest move she could possibly make. Her senses are dulled by fatigue and the little signs she'd normally notice escape her as she makes her way inside, but she can't miss the way the matted rug in hallway is bunched in one corner and instinct kicks in.

Her gun rises almost of its own volition and she creeps forward, silent right up until she steps on a loose floorboard, and the creak seems to thunder through the apartment. She freezes for a moment and then hears her voice like it's foreign. "Aaron?"

She doesn't know why that's what comes out of her mouth, except that maybe she needed to say his name aloud to remember the way it feels.

"Not Aaron, darling."

She hears the dulled cock of a gun and she bolts, a wholly new instinct taking over that wipes away everything, the sleep deprivation and the desire to fight, because this is not the skill of a spy, it's ingrained somewhere deep and it catapults her down flights of stairs and through the streets, running until she doesn't have the slightest idea where she is, just that she hasn't been followed.

She sinks onto wet asphalt as she gasps for air and realizes she's made a choice without knowing it.

Disappearing, really disappearing, is not nearly as hard as hiding in plain sight, and she does it like it's the easiest thing in the world, like a switch is thrown and Emily becomes Anne-Sophie.

The transformation turns out to be more difficult for the little thing growing inside her, but four months later (and one early), the decision she made in a dark alleyway in Boston becomes Lilah.

Hotch is fairly sure he deserves a medal for not killing Clyde Easter on the spot.

* * *

It turns out to be to their benefit that he stays alive (though Hotch is still wavering on letting him stay that way, and it's a minute-to-minute kind of thing) because he fills in blanks that build a profile, and from there, it's Blake and JJ who turn out to be uniquely capable of recognizing the motivation for Emily to drop off the map entirely.

In his wildest dreams, he never anticipated finding out he's going to be a father by way of a behavioral profile.

There's a sort of stunned silence that hangs over the room, and Hotch is barely present, instead lost in his own recall, trying to make the pieces fit (and he knows he shouldn't want this, because not like this, not now, not when it puts everything he wants in harm's way, but the thought of Emily pregnant with his child is elating).

He doesn't have to think long, because now that the idea's out there, it makes perfect sense, and he doubts even she'd realized it was anything more than stress and late nights.

"You can't try to find her," Rossi tells him later in his office while reality finally starts to set in and Hotch has his head in his hands.

"I know, Dave."

"It's exactly what Doyle wants."

Hotch looks up, eyes burning with fury.

"I _know._ "

"It doesn't matter if you know. You have a wife and a child out there, and you can't protect them. I'm just saying, at some point, logic is going to fly out the window, and you're going to try to find them. And I'm telling you now that I will stop you."

Rossi isn't wrong, and as the weeks go by and Hotch lays awake at night trying desperately to conjure a picture of a pregnant Emily, the way it would feel to have his hand on her belly as their child moves under her skin, it becomes harder to rationalize what he's doing.

More than once, they think they have Doyle, and more than once, they're wrong. He wonders if by now he has a son or daughter and it makes him alternately relentless and reckless, to the point that Rossi makes good on his promise and so does his team.

The bullet wound on his chest has healed, a pale circle has formed on his finger where his ring stays put, and an unfinished crib sits in his study when they finally have enough to move.

A senior agent in the Boston field office, one at Quantico, and two dozen officers from police forces on both sides of the Atlantic come down in a raid of spectacular proportions.

More spectacular is the trap they set for Doyle, and Hotch finds himself warming to Easter when the latter puts a bullet between Doyle's eyes.

Forty-eight hours later, Garcia's found Emily, and Hotch is hurtling north toward his future.


	10. Chapter 10

He's almost afraid to approach her, the impossibility of her, of _this_ , so penetrating that a part of him fears that if he moves too fast, comes too close, she'll disappear, and that will be it.

He doesn't think he can survive on his own, anymore. Not after her.

The tremor in his voice surprises even him. "Emily…"

Light catches on her eyes and he can see tears there, cascading loose as her eyes close, and he knows then that she feels it too, that it's too much to hope that this is real. "I didn't know until…" Her voice sounds ragged, and he can only imagine how exhausted she must be after everything. "I wanted to tell you."

His incremental advance finally brings him close enough to feel the heat coming off her, but still, he's afraid to touch her.

Instead, he looks down, completely awestruck by the sight of the baby lying in her arms, and he feels as breathless as he did in the hospital all those months ago. There's an instinctive, desperate need to hold onto them both to keep anything, anyone from taking this away, because it was so, _so_ close.

"What's…" He hears his voice break and feels wetness on his cheeks. "It she - he - "

"Lilah," Emily murmurs.

"Lilah." Somehow, he feels like it's more than a name for the infant and the word that finally explains what he's been reaching for all these months.

"Hotchner."

He moves, then, running the fingers of one hand through her hair to tip her head back, and as brief as it is, he knows from the sound she makes, muted by his mouth pressed to hers, that she understands what it means. Drawing back, he runs a finger over the baby's balled-up fists and his heart all but stops when her fingers spring open, almost like an invitation, and then his daughter's hand is wrapped around his.

"I was afraid it was all she'd have of you." Her eyes are wide, almost fearful, and he realizes suddenly that she has no idea of what he knows, no idea that she's safe - that all of them are - for the first time in years.

"Doyle's dead, Emily. It's over." He presses his nose to the top of her head, breathing in her scent before laying his cheek against her hair, reveling in the unexpected present. "Come home."

She shifts the baby in her arms and raises herself on her tiptoes, letting Lilah's soft weight rest against Aaron's chest as he moves his arms to cradle her. "As long as you still want - "

"God, Emily, I still want you. I want both of you."

Wide eyes stare up at him from under lashes that mark her as Emily's offspring, and he's never seen a look so innocent and pure. "I'm sorry," she whispers, tucking her head beneath his chin.

He closes his eyes, holding close the missing pieces of his life. "I'm not."

* * *

They stay two days in Montréal under the guise of tying loose ends, but really, she thinks, it's that it takes that long for him to put down his daughter long enough to drive home. Tired as she is, she can't close her eyes and lose sight of Aaron sitting in the cramped bedroom of the little apartment with their daughter in his arms.

He finally sets Lilah in the bassinet and lies beside Emily, his body fitted firmly against hers, and she feels something inside her, the raw, gaping wound that's been torn open over and over since Marseille and probably before, start to heal.

They drive home, taking turns behind the wheel, because he can't let go of either one of them for long. She's quiet for most of the ride - they all are, and there's a contentment to it - and she keeps reaching over for him, seeking to reassure herself that this isn't the end stages of exhaustion playing tricks on her mind.

When she sees the house he's bought in her absence and the room upstairs that's empty but for a crib, she understands what it feels like to have a home.

He takes a sabbatical, strongly encouraged in light of recent events, and she watches the way the chaos of having an infant thrust into his life knocks him off balance at first and how he fights to adjust until he's wearing fatherhood like a tailored suit.

Dave comes around a few times, loaded down with bags of gifts for his goddaughter, but the others stay away and Emily aches for Aaron, because she can't bear the thought that she's destroyed the trust his team once had in him, trust he'd earned in blood and sweat.

One night, she suggests a paternity test, something to prove to his team he's not living a lie, and he looks at her, dumbstruck, and stalks off.

She finds him watching Lilah sleep, and she rests a hand on the back of his neck and whispers an apology. He tells her he doesn't have to prove anything to anyone, least of all himself.

The next morning, they bundle Lilah in a comical number of layers and bring her to meet the team, because it's thanks to them that she'll get to grow up and Emily has the sneaking suspicion that her daughter holds the key to reconciliation.

Life doesn't so much normalize - because she's never had a normal to return to - as it settles. Lilah's nearly two by the time Emily's credentials are sorted and she's officially cleared to return to work, but the timing is something of a problem.

Three weeks after Emily Prentiss is formally declared alive, her latest undercover assignment comes to light, a red-faced, howling thing they call Violet, and Hotch is not the slightest bit bothered to be the only man in their little operation.

Turns out, neither of them has to wonder anymore what it's like to be happy.


End file.
